Musician’s memoirs are always a popular bet . . . not particularly safe, but always worth a gamble.

Tales of outlaw behaviour, salacious backroom revelations and confessions of wicked indulgences seem more abundant in the music arena than in other artistic disciplines, offering a whiff of fantasy and escape that fans and wannabe rock stars so desperately crave.

They’re also a good way to make amends, reshape myths, enrich legacies or set records straight, says veteran Canadian music journalist Larry LeBlanc.

“Most of the artists these books are about have peaked and their audiences are getting older. They both want something more than the music as a legacy and reminders of the good old days when things seemed rosier.

“Of course, we know they weren’t.”

This season’s bookshelves are unusually overloaded with rock ’n’ roll tell-alls, autobiographies, biographies — authorized and not — as well as side yarns by industrial insiders, hangers-on, critics and historians.

“But surprisingly, very few of them will make money,” LeBlanc says. “The number of memoirs out now may be an indication of how many older rockers are off the road and have the time to reflect.

“Unless it’s real celebrity stuff, they don’t do well, and publishers rarely pay much in advance because they know most of these kinds of books won’t sell more than 2,000 to 5,000 copies.”

Besides Wyclef Jean’s Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, Somalian-Canadian hip-hopper K’naan’s children’s book, When I Get Older: The Story Behind “Wavin’ Flag,” and Grammy-winning screamer Michael Bolton’s The Soul of It All, we’ve got no fewer than two biographies of the Stones’ lippy, lecherous frontman. There’s the tabloid-ready shocker Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger by Christopher Anderson (published in July) and the brand new Mick Jagger by venerable British journalist Philip Norman, who leaves no stone unturned in the ponderous pursuit of every sliver of his subject’s being.

Neil Young’s long awaited autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, already selling well, will likely rival the memoirs of Bob Dylan (Chronicles) and Keith Richards (Life) for its potent first-person take on the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s long and impressive career, from his Yorkville and Winnipeg beginnings through Crazy Horse, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and beyond.

Young will have to shuffle for shelf space with I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, acclaimed journalist Sylvie Simmons’ exceptional biography, released Oct. 23, an in-depth biography culled from more than 100 interviews, including many with the women in the poet/songwriter’s life. More importantly, the notoriously reclusive Cohen has blessed Simmons with his own words, wisdom and reflections.

And Joni, Vancouver-based writer Katherine Monk’s perceptive analysis of the life events that shaped composer/poet/musician/visual artist Mitchell’s extraordinary creativity, will likely give them all a good run for the money. So hopes publisher Rob Sanders, who came up with the concept for Canada’s Greystone Books and sought out Monk to pull it off.

“Katherine is intellectually astute, and she has a handle on pop music history and the creative process,” says Sanders, now a publisher-at-large at Douglas & McIntyre in Vancouver.

“Joni Mitchell is more than a star in people’s memories. She will always be a bit of an enigma.”

What Joni lacks is the one element that would make the biography a sure thing: input from the artist or a first-person voice, Sanders concedes.

“We suspected going in that there’s no reason Joni and Katherine would actually get together, and that didn’t happen. But this is not a standard biography, and Katherine was able to pull together a number of new and little-known facts and insights about her subject that contribute a great deal to the substance, intellectual quality and style of the book. We expect great things from it.

“A good music biography should explore what makes a particular artist different from the rest of us,” says Sanders, who published Kevin Chong’s Neil Young Nation in 2005 and Robert J. Wiersema’s Walk Like a Man: Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen last year. “There’s an appetite for this information, and that speaks well for the future of this kind of book and for the aspirations of readers.”

The majority of music biographies on this fall’s book list are by artists from the radio-dominated classic rock era, suggesting, says LeBlanc, that they either have the time in their waning years to revisit and perhaps enrich the past, or need to plug their latest tours with tell-alls that will garner free publicity.

That may be what 1960s rock survivor Pete Townshend is up to with Who I Am: A Memoir, an account of the British guitarist/composer’s life, motivations and craft, timed to coincide with the Who’s final world tour.

Former Talking Heads frontman and New York avant-gardiste David Byrne’s How Music Works advanced his concert tour with singer-songwriter St. Vincent (Annie Clark). The book sounds like an academic exercise but, typically for Byrne, it is not what it seems.

Byrne looks into the grip music has on our lives by examining its relationship with the environment in which it’s made, with our senses, emotions and nervous systems, with the ways it’s distributed and marketed, played and listened to. Its 10 essays offer rare insights into an original and brilliant mind, a sort of accidental portrait of the musician in the act of creative self-analysis.

“In their 60s, many artists whose best days have gone by may feel it’s time to get their stories out,” says Rob Bowman, a York University associate professor of ethnomusicology, and an award-winning pop music historian, critic and writer.

“Age could be a factor and, as CD sales decline, so could the prospect of a bestselling book. It’s another revenue stream.”

What is essential to a worthwhile music biography is the artist’s voice, Bowman insists.

“What I look for is insight into the creative process from the artists’ own mouths and minds . . . the reasons they made the music they made, the knowledge only the artists themselves can bring to the table.”

Bowman concedes that Greil Marcus’s 1975 blockbuster Mystery Train, with its vivid evocation of Elvis Presley’s early recording sessions in Memphis, is an exception to his rule, perhaps the only one.

“That chapter caused me to revise my understanding of Presley’s Sun sessions. Marcus really did illuminate that music for me.”

Ray Charles’ and Aretha Franklin’s autobiographies were ultimately disappointing because they were about everything but the music, Bowman said.

“And drugs and sex stories are not interesting, either. We’ve seen all that in the past and it’s way overdone, not new, not revelatory. Besides, with the rise of tabloid TV and celebrity press, there aren’t many secrets left to tell.”

Like so many other music fans, Bowman is waiting for The Band’s Robbie Robertson to publish his memoir.

“He has the potential to be a great storyteller and he’s a very insightful character. I’m just not sure, after all that’s been written about The Band, whether there’s much left that’s worth knowing.”

Other music biographies

• Buffy Sainte-Marie: It’s My Way, an authorized account of the famed Canadian folksinger’s life and work, by Saskatchewan writer Blair Stonechild.

•The John Lennon Letters, an archive of correspondence from Lennon gathered from recipients and collectors, and edited by official Beatles biographer Hunter Davies.

• Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir, co-written with Vanity Fair contributor Jancee Dunn, is a cheeky, funny, witty, wise and occasionally corrosive reflection on the singer and songwriter’s notorious battles with music industry conformists and on her free-form, free-range lifestyle.

• Ann and Nancy Wilson’s Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock and Roll is a convincing glimpse into the on- and off-stage antics of 1970s band Heart’s hard-rocking sisters. It’s rich in ribald tales of love, sex and drugs, with lots of big names, jaw-dropping surprises and salty confessions.

• David Bowie nerds still unsatisfied with the 40-odd biographies already published will find much amusement and contextual matter in GQ editor Dylan Jones’ When Ziggy Played Guitar: David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World. It traces the cultural ramifications of the July 6, 1972 performance by Bowie on the British TV show Top of the Pops of “Starman,” in which the singer’s androgynous alien alter ego was beamed into 15 million U.K. homes.

•Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History, due in November, written by an all-star cast of jazz musicians and experts, including Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Bill Cosby and jazz historian Ashley Kahn. It contains more than 300 photos, album cover artwork and rare concert posters from every period of Davis’s life.

•Makeup To Breakup, founding KISS drummer Peter Criss’s account of his journey to the pinnacle of rock ’n’ roll glory, the perils of excess and fears of his own mortality, a near- suicide, two broken marriages and a hard-won battle with male breast cancer.

•Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar, by Peter Benjaminson, follows the singer’s rise from Detroit’s mean streets to international fame with her chart-topping hit “My Guy.” Based in part on previously unreleased interviews with Wells on her deathbed, Mary Wells is the first book ever written about the influential star, her sudden success and her long fall from grace.

Greg Quill

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